King Kohli has troubled cricket fans and experts globally with his struggles with the bat. Although he hasn’t registered a 3-digit score in more than 2 years, it will be unfair to say that’s hasn’t been able to score. While the likes of Ravi Shastri have urged Virat to take time off cricket. Recently, coach Rahul Dravid vested his trust in Virat Kohli. He made clear what expectations he has from the senior player. Dravid wants Kohli to play some match-winning knocks in crucial stages. Moreover, Dravid doesn’t feel that Kohli is on the wrong side of 30. He is very confident with the fitness and motivation Virat Kohli has.
Rahul Dravid opens on his expectations of ‘match-winning contributions’ from Virat Kohli
“I kind of disagree with you when you say he is on the wrong side of 30. He is probably in my opinion on the right side of 30. I think he is an incredibly fit guy. He is one of the most hard-working guys I have ever come across. His desire and hunger. His whole attitude in looking after himself, his preparation, and even just the way he just played the game at Leicester, batting in those conditions, scoring the kind of 50, 60 that he did. He was keen on batting against Bumrah and all of these guys. So, I think he is ticking all the right boxes. He is doing what he needs to do to sort of come out of it.
As players, you go through these kinds of phases. I don’t think you need motivation to be very honest. Don’t think in Virat’s case it is a lack of motivation. You go through phases like this at times. Sometimes you bat well…it’s not so much about focussing on those three figures but you know even a 70 in a difficult wicket in Cape Town…when we played at Cape Town, I thought that was very good innings.
Obviously, a guy like him, the kind of standard that he set, the number of hundreds that he scored, people only see a hundred as a success. From a coach’s perspective, we only want contributions from him, we want match-winning contributions for him, whether that’s a 50, that’s a 60 on a wicket like that. Maybe tomorrow’s wicket, maybe a 60 or a 70 could end up being a match-winning performance or it may not, we might need a big score for him. But yeah, from our perspective, there is not a lot of focus on three figures and whether he gets it.”
Rahul Dravid
Dravid: “Six captains in 7 months not something I envisaged”
Since Dravid took the coaching duties of the Indian team, there have been several captains leading the Indian team in different instances. On India’s tour to Sri Lanka, Shikhar Dhawan was the one who led team India. Then we had Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, and Hardik Pandya captain the team. Virat was the Indian captain back then, whereas others led the team because the Indian team was playing two teams simultaneously or because skipper Rohit Sharma was unavailable. Recently, KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma are ruled out of the England Test, pacer Jasprit Bumrah will lead the team.
“It is what it is. When I took this job, even I couldn’t have predicted that we will have so many captains in six or seven months but that can happen in times we are living in, COVID-19, unfortunate injuries to people, what happened to Rahul (groin injury) and now to Rohit in last 3 weeks. Sometimes, we have had to balance out the workload and just have to react to that, its not something I wanted when I started off, not something you envisage when you start off but when they arise, you react and deal with them in spite of number we have had, we have played pretty good cricket, over last six to eight months. We have got our contingency plans in place and communications are clear and within the group everyone knows what we are going to do if some situation arises.”
